CHAPTER XXVIII.

DIVINE ORDINANCES: THE SABBATH-THE SACRAMENTS—INSTITUTED WORSHIP-DISCIPLINE-EVANGELIZATION.

I. Statement of the General Demonstration.-II. 1. The Sabbath a perpetual element in the Moral System of the Universe.-2. Its indissoluble connection with the whole Creative, Providential, and Gracious Work of God.-3. Its unspeakable importance to Man.-III. 1. The true idea of the Sacraments.-2. Nature and Use of these Divine Mysteries.-3. Descriptive explanation of them.-4. The Ends they serve and promote.-5. Their Efficacy depends on the Work of the Spirit in him who receives them, and is Wrought through our Faith in Christ.6. The Number of them, and its constancy: their Relation to the Church under Successive Dispensations: Christ's relation to them, and their Record of him.-IV. 1. The Instituted Worship of God: Atheism repugnant to our natural convictions:. The Spiritual Worship of the true God repugnant to our depraved nature.-2. The Revealed Will of God concerning the Worship he requires: its Object, Nature, Means, Rule, Obligation and End.-3. Particulars of Revealed Worship. First class: Sanctification of the Sabbath-Stated Assembling of Congregations-Almsgiving.-4. Second class: Particulars of stated Public Worship ordained by God for each congregation.-5. Third class: Administration of the Sacraments, Infliction of Church Censures, Public Fasting and Thanksgiving.— V. 1. The Ordinance of Discipline: Its Nature, and Efficacy.-2. Manner and Objects of its Administration.-3. The Censures of the Church are wholly spiritual: those inflicted upon offending members.-4. Administration of the Censures of the Church against all the Enemies of God.-VI. 1. The Evangelization of the world, an Ordinance of God: its Obligation on the Church.-2. Brief Appreciation of that great Endeavour.

I. THE execution of God's eternal Covenant of Grace, produces the Kingdom of God in its threefold aspect of the Messianic Kingdom under Christ its head, the New Creation by the Holy Ghost, and the Church of the Living God held forth in the covenant people of God. In this last aspect the Kingdom of God becomes visible and organized by the divine use of the two ideas of the Headship of Christ and the communion of saints: and the whole of that organization, and the whole action of the Church by means of every part thereof, are products of divine ordinances revealed by God, and every one of them a Gift of God to his Church. These divine ordinances therefore, em

brace everything which gives visibility, organization, and efficacy to the Kingdom of God as now manifested in this world, considered as the Church of Christ. Of the three supreme Gifts of God to this Church, which I have considered in the preceding chapter, only the third one-his written word-can be considered as strictly an ordinance; and that, perhaps, only in its form as written and therefore permanent. Nevertheless, there is a profound sense in which not only the written word, but, also, both the Saviour and the Spirit are, as I have endeavoured to explain, peculiar Gifts of God to his Church visible and organized, peculiarly related to all these ordinances bestowed on her in those respects. The chief of those ordinances by means of which those three supreme Gifts of God are made effectual, I am now to consider as briefly as I can. First generally; afterwards those called sacraments, more particularly; then the office-bearers who administer them, and the Government which these office-bearers compose and administer by the ordination of God. In this manner the analogy will be complete between the second and third books of this Treatise, on one side, wherein the Subjective Knowledge of God, first in the actual work in the individual soul and then in the effects of that work, is disclosed; and the fourth and fifth books on the other side, wherein first the actual constitution of the visible Church, and then the outward divine movement of it, are attempted to be demonstrated. And thus the whole Treatise to the end of this book, ought to present to us one large and connected demonstration of the mode in which God saves his elect, the personal work in their souls, their individual lives resulting therefrom, their organization into a visible Church, the true nature, end, and work of that Church, the supreme Gifts of God to it, its divine ordinances, its divinelyordained office-bearers, and divinely-appointed Government and the movement thereof.

II.-1. The consecration of man to the service and enjoyment of God, and therewith his investiture by God with dominion over, and property in, the earth and all things therein, and the divine command to possess and to replenish it with his seed; was coincident with the creation of the first parents of our race. The other great act of God's providence preceding the Covenant of Works, was that he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it. 2 Gen., ii. 1-3.

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1 Gen., i. 27–30.

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Throughout the Scriptures no two ideas are more perpetually held forth, than these two of the primeval consecration of man and of the Sabbath; and amidst the great variety of aspects in which the latter is presented to us, we are never left in doubt that it is a fundamental element in the moral system of the universe to which man appertains. Its primary conception is that of a hallowed rest, whose use shall be the special worship of God, the cultivation of the divine life in our own souls, and the doing of good to our fellow-men. It is, therefore, a divine ordinance containing in itself, in some sort, a summary of all human obligation; our duty, namely, to God, to ourselves, and to each other. In this manner we see it connected with the whole work of God, as manifested in creation, in providence, and in grace. In this manner it is connected with the origin, course, and destiny of our race under both Covenants, under every dispensation of the Covenant of Grace, with reference to our entire being in this life, and to all the issues of it in the life

to come.

2. I have already pointed out the fact of its institution in immediate connection with the work of creation, and as one of the two great acts of God's providence towards man in his estate of original perfection. And the reason of that connection, and of the connection of those two acts of God towards man with each other, is clearly and repeatedly given by him. The act commemorated, alike, God's work of creation, and God's ceasing from further creative work, in ineffable repose, when that work was done, and he saw that everything he had made was very good and it ordained that man, the created and the blessed head of this whole work, should thus commemorate, forever, his own origin and blessedness, and the being, and glory, and work, and rest of God, in whose image he was created.' And this was its special use, under both covenants-with such additions as increasing revelations of the grace of God made thereto—until the work of humiliation by Christ was complete, and he had risen from the dead. Its connection with the moral nature of man, and the moral Law written in that nature by God at the creation of man, is no less immediate. When God, at Sinai, restored upon two tables of stone, the sum of that unalterable rule of all duty required of man, and laid it at the foundation of his written

1 Gen., ii. 1-3; Exod., xx. 8-11.

word; one of the four commandments of the first table, the sum of which as interpreted by Christ, is the duty of supreme love to God, was the distinct reiteration of this ordinance of the Sabbath day, as possessing the very highest moral obligation.' Nor was its connection less close with the civil polity, ordained by God for his ancient people. The feast of the Passover which commemorated both the bondage and the deliverance of the Jewish people, the feast of Pentecost which commemorated the giving of the Law at Sinai, and the feast of Tabernacles which commemorated their pilgrimage from Egypt to Canaan-the greatest events in their history, were all as really sabbatical as they were national; and both their years of Jubilee, the seventh and fiftieth-the most remarkable features of their political institutions, were purely sabbatical years. Indeed the idea of hallowed time-time consecrated to God and a Sabbath for man, pervaded, thoroughly, every civil institution of that remarkable commonwealth. The ceremonial system added to the moral and political systems, completed the outward organization of the Jewish Dispensation; and the idea of the divine and perpetual obligation of the Sabbath day was as completely fixed in the whole Levitical and sacrificial system, and in the Dispensation considered as a whole, as I have just shown it to have been in its moral and civil elements. In the wilderness no manna fell on the Sabbath day. Nothing might be brought in through the gates of Jerusalem on that day. And so completely was the right observance of the day a conspicuous token between God and his ancient people, that this has been continually made a pretext for rejecting the Sabbath, as a purely Jewish institution. In like manner, the New Testament Scriptures and the Christian Dispensation, have not only accepted and perpetuated, in a manner the most complete, this vital conception and ordinance; but they have articulately enlarged its significance by investing the Sabbath with the idea of Redemption as well as the idea of Creation-the idea of the divine Saviour as well as the idea of the omnipotent God. Christ proclaimed himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath day; his inspired Apostles called the day on which he rose from the dead-and repeatedly appeared to them—the Lord's day ; and, divinely authorized, they distinguished that

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1 Exod., xx. 8-11; Mat., xxii. 37, 38.

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3 Mat., xii. 8.

2 Isa., lviii. 13, 14; Ezekiel, xx. 12–20.

4 Rev., i. 10; John, xx. 19. 26.

day as the perpetual Sabbath of the Christian Church: which that Church has observed through all ages, with a fidelity exactly proportioned to the measure of its grace. And finally, this enduring and august summary of the sublime spiritual system of which God, and man, and creation, and providence, and redemption are the everlasting elements-is projected into eternity; and the assurance of a rest-a sabbatism-on the other side of the Jordan of death-even that heaven into which Jesus the Son of God, our great high priest has passed, is revealed to our faith as one of its very firmest supports.'

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3. To us, then, this Sabbath day is a sign between God and our own souls, alike of our original perfection as his creatures, and of our crowning and endless blessedness as his redeemed children. It is besides a joy and a support to us, all along our weary pilgrimage, fighting as we go the good fight of faith Truly has our Lord said, The Sabbath was made for man ; and, therefore, how could it be, that the Son of man should not be Lord of the Sabbath? Take from the Christian Church this very first gift of God to man, and who can conceive by what other means she can either gather or perfect God's saints? Take from a world full of sin, and toil, and ignorance, and misery, this hallowed rest, and then imagine by what possibility the human race can be extricated from perpetual degradation in this life, and endless ruin in that which is to come? Silence, in the hearts of all God's saints, those words of solemn admonition and of sweetest consolation, Remember the Sabbath day; and who could endure a life of temptation, and trial, and warfare, and sorrow―robbed of all hallowed rest on earth-robbed of all type, and sign, and seal of eternal rest to come? And who should restore to God the glory and the praise of all penitent and believing souls-the glory and the praise of all created and redeemed souls-when the day of the Lord should return no more, and the voice of the bride be heard no more? Many things are done and many are left undone, both by the Church and the world, which, while we see the omission or the act to be wrong, we see also some way to explain the motive for that which we condemn. But that the Church or the world could ever apprehend the ordination of the Sabbath day-as anything else than a transcendent blessing to our ruined world-a transcendent 1 Heb., iv. passim. Mark, ii. 27, 28.

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